Rajiv assassination not a crime against India: Ram Jethmalani

NEW DELHI: Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, arguing for Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convict Murugan, stoked a controversy on Tuesday by telling the Supreme Court that the May 21, 1991 suicide bomb attack which killed the former prime minister at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, was not a crime against India.
A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justices F M I Kalifulla, P C Ghose, A M Sapre and U U Lalit is hearing the Centre’s petition challenging Tamil Nadu government’s February 19, 2014 decision to commute the sentences of seven life convicts in the Rajiv assassination case and release them from prison.
Tamil Nadu’s decision came a day after the apex court commuted the death penalties of three – Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan – on the ground that they had undergone long periods of incarceration under the shadow of death penalty and that their mercy petitions were decided after a long delay.
The other four to be released as per Tamil Nadu’s decision were Robert Pais, Jaikumar, Nalini and Ravi Chandran. The SC had stayed the Tamil Nadu government’s decision on the Centre’s plea.
Jethmalani said the death penalty of Nalini, Murugan’s wife, was commuted after, what he claimed, personal intervention of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
“Each of these seven accused have spent 23 years in prison. If the remissions earned were to be taken into account, the period of incarceration would be over 30 years. The judgment commuting the death penalty of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan clearly stated that life imprisonment was subject to remission power of the state government under Section 432 of the Criminal Procedure Code,” Jethmalani said.
“There was so much public sympathy for chief minister Jayalalithaa’s decision to release the convicts. It (Rajiv assassination case) was not a crime against the nation but a conspiracy to punish a PM who reneged on his promise to help LTTE. These accused had no direct role in the assassination. They were indoctrinated and did what their bosses said. They had suffered enough for being just indoctrinated. The court must look at their case from mercy point of view,” he added.
Questioning the Centre’s locus standi in the matter and the wisdom to move a writ petition, both Jethmalani and TN’s counsel Rakesh Dwivedi said no fundamental right of the Centre had been violated by the state’s decision to release the convicts.
Other counsel Yug Chaudhury, who appeared for Santhan, Robert Pais, Jaikumar, Nalini and Ravi Chandran, and Rishabh Sancheti, who appeared for Perarivalan, supported Dwivedi and Jethmalani. Dwivedi and Chaudhury said that at best it was a turf war between the Centre and the state over who had the jurisdiction to commute sentence of convicts in a case investigated by the central agency CBI.
But Jethmalani was so engrossed in the case that he argued as if he was appearing for the state government. Solicitor general Ranjit Kumar forced a correction on Jethmalani while attacking his stand that Rajiv assassination was not a crime against the country.
Kumar said, “A former prime minister was killed by foreign nationals in conspiracy with certain Indians. The suicide bomb attack also claimed 18 more lives and injured 49 others. What mercy is being talked about? The Supreme Court has already shown mercy by commuting death penalty to life. What mercy is to be shown, the apex court will decide.”
The bench termed the questions raised in the Centre’s petition as important and said it would hear the petition on merits rather than concentrate on “preliminary objections on maintainability” raised by the convicts and the Tamil Nadu government.
Last year, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had reacted sharply to TN’s decision, asking, “If a prime minister's killers can be released, what kind of justice should the common man expect?”
Then leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley had written in his blog, “After assassinating a former prime minister of the country, there can be institutional compassion for such persons is difficult to comprehend." He had said, “Terrorism is an offence against the country. It must attract a deterrent punishment.”